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Thursday, 20 December 2012

U.S. unveils plan to manage huge Alaskan oil reserve

The U.S. federal government has announced a plan to manage
energy drilling on part of Alaska's
North Slope, with the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve to be divided between
areas available for oil and
gas leases and those that are protected from development.

The announcement by U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
followed the completion of an environmental impact study, which recommended
development of areas that contain about 72 percent of the estimated
"economically recoverable" oil in the reserve.

The move drew criticism from Alaska Sen.
Lisa Murkowski,
who said the Obama
administration had not gone far enough to open up oil and natural gas resources
in the area.

Salazar said the plan as conceived would
allow for the potential construction of pipelines carrying oil or gas from
operations in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas through the NPR region, also known
as the Western Arctic Reserve.

The "balanced approach" would
help protect "significant caribou herds, migratory bird habitat and
sensitive coastal resources that are critically important to the culture and
subsistence lifestyle of Alaska Natives," Salazar said.

The administration has authorized 177 oil and gas
leases in the reserve since May 2011, covering some 1.4 million acres. So far
only exploratory drilling has occurred.

Under the blueprint 11.8 million acres
would be open for development, which are estimated to hold 549 million barrels
of economically recoverable
oil and 8.7 trillion cubic feet of economically recoverable
natural gas.